Piercing group too far out for even Solstice Parade

Organizers of the annual parade with nude bicyclists, and last year a giant inflatable penis, have decided that people pulling a float with a chain hooked to their piercings goes too far.

They've banned a group that marched last year from making a reappearance in Saturday's parade -- this time dressed up as pirates with two people suspended on a pirate ship float from hooks in their skin.

The debate over the group, People Undergoing Real Experiences, has pitted those concerned about limiting the freedom of expression in a neighborhood that so values its uniqueness it has a giant statue of Lenin against those worried about freaking people out.

Monica Miller, the parade's director, said board members of the Fremont Arts Council, which runs the parade, made the decision in a 7-2 vote during an emergency meeting Saturday after failing to reach a consensus.

She said the majority worried it would disturb children, scare away financial sponsors and could possibly cause injury, not necessarily to the people suspended by piercings but to spectators. "One fear that was brought up was that people might be shocked, pass out and injure themselves, or we'd be liable for psychiatric damage," Miller said.

Jen Morgensen said she was going to be one of two people suspended from a gallows on the pirate ship float. "My suspension was going to be like Superman," Morgensen said. "I was going to have two hooks in my upper back, two hooks in my lower back and two in the back of my calves, and two in the back of my thighs, and one in my arm.

Like many practitioners of "suspension," Morgensen said it is a way to take control of her life. She suffers from a heart and neurological condition that causes strokelike symptoms and sends her to the hospital about twice a year. "I've been doing it for over a year and I've been suspended many times, and it's still incredibly daunting, something that I'm actually afraid of. And I can say I can do this."

Xavier Frost, another member of the group, said: "We're no longer a hunting-and-gathering society. There's no way to prove your manhood or womanhood. It gives people a trial to defeat and conquer, like climbing Mount Everest."

Said Morgensen: "The pain is temporary. And you have the personal power to breathe through the pain."

Joshua Okrent, the board director of the Fremont Arts Council, said about three weeks ago, a woman who lives in the Fremont neighborhood wrote a letter to the arts council. The woman described herself as "very liberal," but called PURE "extreme." She wrote about the difficulty of explaining to her children what the group was doing, Okrent said. "The letter set off a torrent of sentiment" within the council, Okrent said.

The debate was a difficult one for Jessica Randolph, who creates public art and voted to bar the group. From the depth of the calls she received against the group, she thought the roots lay in people's own stories of abuse. "We don't know what happened to people as adults or as children, but I think those are the people who probably have the most sensitivity to self-mutilation or how people push their bodies."

Frost said the arts council offered a number of alternatives, including having a spot in the post-parade festival at Gas Works Park that would not be open to public view, and marching in the parade without the piercings. But Frost said the group was not interested in being relegated to subculture status, and marching without the piercings defeated the entire purpose of what they do.

Although the arts council does not sanction the people who bicycle nude in the parade every year, board member Brian Kooser said the board hasn't tried to get rid of them, either.

Trying to explain the distinction between nude bicyclists and people suspended by piercings, he said: "I think for many years, people had this innocent parade. They had some nudity. This seemed to some people a lot more serious than that."